God Does Not Help Those Who Help Themselves

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

Today, if you remember nothing else from this sermon, I beg you to remember this: God does not help those who help themselves.

God does NOT help those who help themselves. That’s the message this morning. And while I’m going to delve into all of our Bible lessons for today, our theme verse for this morning could well be Proverbs, chapter 3, verses 5 to 7, which I hope you’ll read aloud with me now. You can find it on page 360 of the pew Bibles. Read aloud with me, please:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and depart from evil. 

God does not help those who help themselves.

Instead...

• God helps those who surrender to God. 
• God helps those who place their past sins, their present lives, and their future destinies in His hands. 
• God helps those who fear, respect, and honor God. 
• God helps those who strive through daily repentance and renewal to live according to God’s will. 
• God helps those who believe in Jesus Christ. 
• God helps those who trust in the Bible as God’s perfect word for us. 
• God helps those who acknowledge their helplessness and turn to God for help. 
• God helps those who see living as a sacred privilege and an undeserved pleasure, even when racked by pain or trouble, and so seek to live lives of tenacious effort and strenuous service. 
• God helps those who draw life, fulfillment, direction, and hope from Him alone.

God does not help those who help themselves. Ancient Israel should have known that. For four hundred thirty years God’s people were slaves in Egypt, generation upon generation under the master’s whip. Yet God heard the cries of His people and against all odds, God delivered them from Egypt and then, despite their constant faithlessness and whining during a forty-year journey that should have taken just eleven days, God gave them a promised land.*

God helped this people not because there was anything special about Abraham and his descendants. One of ancient Israel’s greatest leaders was Moses, who told the people in a sermon delivered shortly before God took them from the desert into that promised land:

It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery…[Deuteronomy 7:7-8]

God loved Israel, the Bible basically says, because God loved Israel. It doesn't make sense; but love doesn't have to make sense!

God chose Israel so that somewhere on Planet Earth, there would be a people who knew Him intimately and could be, in a phrase found in today’s first lesson, “a light to the nations” and, as attested in many places in the Old Testament, the incubator, the birthing room, of the Messiah, God's anointed King of kings. This Messiah would bring God’s kingdom to people around the world who will trust in Him. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for them. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for the world. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for you and me.

Now, when a people have been delivered by God, there are several ways they can react. As you know—and I don’t mean for this to be a hobby horse, after my heart attack last June, my cardiologist and nurses told me two things. One is that they couldn’t explain why I’d had a heart attack. The other is that couldn’t explain why I survived my heart attack. Forty percent of my heart had been damaged. Heart function was well below the danger level. Today, I can be faulted for being fanatical about my diet, daily exercise, and getting down time. But I honestly feel that God has delivered me and I want desperately to respond to that deliverance through a life of faithfulness, gratitude, witnessing, and prayer. There is nothing about me—an imperfect sinning human being—that deserves God’s help. And only time will tell if I will lean on God to sustain this grateful life style. But this is one way to respond to deliverance and grace.

The more common way for us all to react to God’s deliverance—and the one of which I have been guilty most of my life—is to take it and God for granted. Or to forget about it and move on as though God weren’t there.

Despite all of the incredible blessings God had showered on His undeserving people, this path—the path of self-will and self-reliance—was the one that Israel took.

It was the path against which the prophets were sent to warn God’s people. The prophets called them to repent of their reliance on wealth, power, alliances with foreign nations, and the worship of false gods and to instead turn again in utter dependence on God.

Jesus, God in the flesh, later gave the same message to all of us. He says that to gain life, we must enter the kingdom of God by the narrowest gates—by faith in Him alone—for “the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

With prosperity and power, God’s ancient people wandered from their focus on God. The prophets told them that to continue their wandering would lead to destruction. As we mentioned last week, it did. Repeatedly, Israel was conquered, enslaved, and exiled by foreign nations.

When we rely on anything or anyone but God, it means that the world can do its worst to us.

When we rely on God, even when the world still does its worst to us, we live in the constant confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We know that through Jesus Christ, we belong to God forever!

Our first lesson for today comes from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Most scholars agree that the the section of Isaiah from which our lesson is drawn was not written by the original Isaiah. In ancient times, it was acceptable for a student or follower of a great teacher to write in that teacher’s name. It’s thought that the author of at least chapters 40 through 53 of this 66-chapter book were written by someone the scholars call Deutero- or Second-Isaiah. (You might think of him as Isaiah, Junior.)

Deutero-Isaiah began recording his prophecies not long before the fall of the Babylonian Empire on October 29, 539BC. Sometime before, God’s people had been conquered by Babylon. When Cyrus, the king of Persia, a nation located in what is today Iran, conquered Babylon, it spelled freedom for God’s people from their slavemasters. This is precisely what Deutero-Isaiah had earlier reported that God had revealed to him. He even went so far as to say that Cyrus, an aggressive warrior king whose life was totally contrary to the life of faith in God, had been anointed by God to set Israel free.

But mingled with Deutero-Isaiah’s prophecies about Israel’s immediate future are what modern scholars call the Servant Songs. There are four of them. A portion of one of them makes up our first lesson, Isaiah 42:1-9.

In the Servant Songs, Isaiah records what God had taught him about the Anointed One—Messiah in his language of Hebrew, Christos or Christ in the New Testament’s language of Greek.

Would you pull out the Celebrate insert and look at the lesson? This is what God told Isaiah to tell us about the Savior He would send to be the narrow way by which we all can be forgiven our sins, reconciled with God, and have new, eternal lives free of sin and death and futility. Read along with me silently, please:

• “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights..." [On this Sunday when we remember the baptism of our Lord, when a voice from heaven spoke words like these of Jesus, we should have no doubt of Who the promised servant was and is: God enfleshed, Jesus the Anointed One.];
• "I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations..." [He will free repentant sinners who believe in Him not only in Israel, but all over the world, including Logan, Ohio.].
• "He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street..." [Unlike warriors who bark as they conquer, Jesus will conquer through servanthood and love.]
• "a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench..." [One scholar has said that the reed and the burning wick represent those who may seem strong on the outside, but are weak on the inside. A reed may be standing, but a bruise may threaten its life. A wick may be burning, but nearly burned out. This past week, many of us have watched the story of Ted Williams, the homeless recovering addict with a golden voice, who flew to New York to be given a second chance in life. I hope that Williams, surely a reed bruised by his life and by his own actions, will have the strength to resist the temptations of fame and all that goes with it. He can have that strength if he turns to the Servant-Messiah. To all of we bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks, God promises that unlike warriors such as Cyrus or demanding bosses or an unforgiving world, the Servant Jesus will not come to destroy us, but to restore us. That’s a wonderful promise!] ;
• "...he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching." [Jesus, the Savior Who would set His face toward Jerusalem and His cross, Second Isaiah says, would not give up until He had gone to the cross and to His resurrection so that, as our lesson from Acts tells us, “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins [and with that God gives new life] through His Name.”]

Deutero-Isaiah, nearly six centuries before Jesus’ birth, pointed to a time when people weary with trying to face life by helping themselves would be helped, saved, delivered, and made new by God.

He doesn’t mention Jesus’ Name. As one contemporary scholar has said, the Servant’s Name isn’t given, but “his activity and character” are. And it’s more than just coincidence that the One Who came to be baptized by John the Baptist at the River Jordan, Who insisted despite His own sinlessness, on turning to the Father in the same way He one day would command that all we sinful people must in order to be saved, this Jesus, engaged in all the activities and exhibited all the character that our lesson from Isaiah associates with the Servant Messiah.

God doesn’t help those who help themselves. God helps those who take God’s help. And His help is named Jesus.

How many of you need God’s help this morning?

Trust only in Jesus and never lean on your own understanding. Fear him, trust in Him, depend on Him, and you will have all the help you’ll ever need for all eternity. Amen! 

*You can learn more about this by reading the Old Testament books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.

Understanding Revelation, Part 1 (Revelation 1:4-8)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Revelation 1:4-8
We Lutherans tend to approach the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament--the last book, in fact, of the 66 books of the Bible--with about the same excitement we have when going to the dentist for root canal. We shy away from Revelation.

One reason for that, I think, is that we’ve watched Revelation get so misused by people. Some take the word pictures of Revelation, so strange to us, and use them in the way psychics use astrological charts, Ouija boards, or palm readings.

We see many so-called end-time experts (and well meaning Christians) treat the book of Revelation not as God’s Word, but as some sort of code that they have unlocked, as the repository of secret information which only good folks like them have figured out, as an object of superstition.

Back in the 1960s, there was a guy who had a best-selling book. In it, he claimed that the final battle described by Revelation was going to be between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Soviet Union passed out of being. So, I assumed that this fellow would have decided to hide himself away, his tail between his legs. Not so. A few years ago, I was channel-surfing and saw this same author, now saying that the final battle would be between the United States and Iraq. I've heard that others of his kind today tell rapt audiences that the final war will be between the United States and Iran.

This kind of superstitious fear-mongering may sell books or draw the financial contributions of the gullible. But let’s take a look at what we know about Revelation, based on what we find in Revelation and what we know of the times in which it was written. Let’s let the book speak to us as the Word of God alone. Right now, I’ll say a few words about Revelation, a few more about today’s lesson, and then close.

The title of the book—Revelation, not Revelations, by the way—comes from its first word as it appears in the Greek, the language in which it, like all the books of the New Testament, was originally written. That word is apocalupsis. It means a revelation, or more literally, a lifting of the veil. It was written, many scholars believe, during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, between 81 and 96AD. The reasons for believing this is that the conditions on the ground as Revelation describes them fairly match what we know about those times from other historical records.

It was a time of sporadic persecution of Christians.

It was also a time of increasing tension between Christians and Jews. Because the first Christians were Jews who believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of all that God had set out to do from the time of Abraham, they and the world first saw Christian faith as another part of Judaism. But as Christians came to appreciate more fully that Jesus died and rose for all people, not just the Jews, more non-Jews became Christians and many Jews became uncomfortable with Christianity.

After the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD, many Jews left the holy land and settled throughout the Roman Empire, joining synagogues that had already been established following previous persecutions of the Jews. At this time, Jews understandably tried to make nice with the Romans. (After all, who wants to be persecuted?) But some Jews also used this as a time to separate themselves from Christians in the eyes of the Roman Empire.

You see, by this time, Christian faith was growing and the Romans were wary of Christians. Christians made a subversive confession: “Jesus is Lord.” Romans believed that only the emperor was lord, maybe even a god. So when Christians confessed Jesus as their only Lord, they were seen as threatening the empire. They were saying that Jesus is more important than any emperor, government, or economic or social system. More important than anything!

It was to Christians facing persecution, marginalization, and misunderstanding that Revelation was written.

Revelation really isn’t a book, but a letter. It was written by John the Evangelist, to seven churches in what the people of his time called Asia, but which today we know as the western provinces of Turkey. Because “seven” was the Bible’s number of completeness—you know, God rested on the seventh day, it’s believed that John was writing to all the churches in that region. This letter was meant to be read aloud—all 22 chapters--in one sitting during worship.*

It’s clear that John wrote Revelation for two basic reasons. First: John wanted to assure Christians that Jesus is returning one day. No matter what may go wrong in this life, one day Jesus will return and make things right. All who trust in Jesus Christ will be part of His everlasting kingdom. Second: John also wrote Revelation to affirm that “God is God.” Sin and evil may rage, but God is ultimately in control.**

Christ is returning and God is God: Those are messages that we need to hear today because, as one of our Saint Matthew members said to me this week, sometimes life feels like a giant snowball that just keeps rolling and rolling and we can’t control it. Revelation tells us we can’t control it, but it does assure us that God is still God and our Lord Jesus is still coming back one day to claim His kingdom. The God we know in Jesus Christ is in control of our ultimate destiny.

There’s a lot that could be said about today’s lesson from Revelation. But I don’t want the lasagna or spaghetti to get cold.*** So, I call your attention to three phrases that John uses to describe Jesus in verse 5. John clearly believes that we are to follow our Lord in living a life like His and that like Him, we need not fear, because through the blood Jesus shed for us on the cross, we share in the life of the God “Who is and Who was and Who is to come.”

Title #1 for Jesus: the faithful witness. The word for witness in the original Greek is martus, which also gives us the word martyr in English. Jesus first shared the word about our salvation from sin and death: all who turn from sin and believe in Him live with God forever. Then, He went to the cross, in spite of His fear of suffering, in order to activate salvation for all who believe. The faithful witness became a martyr, the Word took on flesh and died, giving His life for us, certain of the Father’s purpose for His life. Jesus has commissioned us to be faithful witnesses, to invite others into fellowship with Christ and the Church, to be used for God’s purposes, and sometimes, to do so in the face of hostility, condemnation, or worse.

Yesterday, after finishing this sermon, being a nerd, I decided that while dusting my office, I would listen to a podcast of a Dr. Patricia O’Toole lecture on our twenty-sixth president, Theodore Roosevelt. (Not exactly Lady Gaga, is it?) In her lecture, O'Toole said that you could actually Google recordings of Roosevelt speaking. TR died in 1919. So, recordings of him are rare and I had only previously heard a few seconds of audio of his voice. But I Googled as O'Toole suggested and found a nearly five minute speech of Theodore Roosevelt's. Because I had just been working on this sermon, I was struck by the last line of his speech. Listen to what he said, “In the long fight for righteousness, the watchword is spend and be spent.”

For the Biblical Christian, righteousness isn't some personal attainment of purity. The Bible teaches that righteousness is the gift of being made right with God through Jesus Christ and our faith in Christ. We know that because of Christ, we are counted righteous for all eternity and nothing can separate us from the love of God.

For us then, "the fight for righteousness" to which Roosevelt referred, is the fight to introduce the spiritually disconnected, those outside the fellowship of Christ and the Church, to the Savior Who gives life to all who repent and believe in Him.

Our call and our commission from Christ is to spend our lives, to be spent by God, so that those who don’t know Jesus can know Him and be made be right with Him too. We can spend ourselves in this way because we know that we already are saved forever and nothing we might gain from a life of leisure and repose is worth a fraction of what our guaranteed life with Christ is worth!

To spend and be spent in our lives pointing others to Jesus. That’s our purpose. That’s what we’re made for. That’s a life worth living. Like our Lord, we are called to be faithful witnesses.

Title #2 for Jesus: the firstborn of the dead. Jesus had raised Lazarus and others from the dead, of course. But, they would one day die again. Jesus is the first to rise from death and to stay UNDEAD. The New Testament book of Hebrews calls Jesus our “pioneer.” Jesus is the One Who has blazed the trail, tearing open the morgue of sin and death into which we were born. No matter what this life brings to us, we live in the certainty that death no longer stings. In Christ, we have nothing to fear.

Title #3 for Jesus: the ruler of the kings of the earth. The message about Jesus as King of kings and Lord of all lords was frightening to the despots of 96AD. They saw Jesus’ lordship as a threat to them, because it was a threat to them. If Jesus is Lord, you can't keep thoughtlessly ignore the will of God. You can't cavalierly pick and choose which of God’s commandments you’ll obey. You can't justifiably treat your neighbor unjustly or without love.

Frankly, I wish we all had a little more respectful fear of Jesus today. I wish that we took Him more seriously. If we did, we would live our lives differently.

We would let Him and His Word have the final say in all our decisions, even the decisions we make in His Church.

We wouldn’t replace Christ’s authority with our own thoughts, feelings, or reflections.

And you and I wouldn’t be afraid to tell others the greatest news the world has ever heard: That the God of all creation has shared our lives, has suffered death, and has risen again so that all the petty kings of this life we so fear and all the discouragement, difficulty, and even the tragedy we endure here, are nothing compared to the promise we have of living with Jesus for all eternity.

Jesus is coming back and God is God forever. In Revelation, John the Evangelist has lifted the veil on these truths. Now, let’s you and I ask God to give us the faith to live like we believe these truths!


*The commentary of M. Eugene Boring is a source of much of the material on Revelation shared here.
**New Testament scholar Walter Taylor, one of my seminary professors, is the source for this very good, succinct summary of Revelation's message.
***The men of the congregation served an Italian dinner after worship today. The proceeds from the dinner are going to help support two local emergency food pantries.

First Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (January 13, 2008)

[Each week, I try to publish a few looks at the appointed lessons for the following Sunday. They're written, mostly, to help the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I serve as pastor, to prepare for worship. But since we follow the lectionary associated with the Church Year, like most Christians around the world, others may find it helpful too.]

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

General Comments:
1. January 6, Epiphany Day, kicks off the season of the Church Year called Epiphany. As pointed out before, the word epiphany literally means to shine upon. It has the idea of making something clear.

The theme of the Gospel lessons appointed for the Epiphany season is the many ways in which Jesus was revealed to be not only fully human, but also fully God. The other lessons, including those drawn from the Old Testament, also help us more fully see Christ as "the Word made flesh."

2. Light is often associated with the Epiphany season. This is related to more than the star which led the magi to the baby Jesus. It also relates to how Jesus reveals the nature, character, will, presence, and intent of God, among other things. In Jesus, we see God.

3. Another theme of the Epiphany season is the call to be witnesses who point to Jesus as God, Lord, and Savior. This is precisely what Peter, a devout Jew who comes to see that through Christ, God is reaching out the entire world, does in our second lesson. Followers of Jesus are called to reveal the truth about Jesus, so that the whole world can come to be His followers and so, live with God forever.

4. This Sunday's Gospel lesson, as is always the case on this Sunday of the Church Year, is about the Baptism of the Lord. Unlike the birth of Jesus or even the Last Supper, the baptism of Jesus is recounted in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). This underscores its importance. We'll talk about that a bit more in the next pass at these lessons.

5. Isaiah 42:1-9: As we've pointed out before, Isaiah may have been written by three different authors in three different eras of Old Testament history. (This shouldn't be bothersome to us, as it was legitimate in ancient Israel and even in the first and second-century AD world for persons who considered themselves students of great teachers or adherents to those teachers schools of thought to write in the teacher's name.) Many scholars believe that chapters 1 to 39 were written by the original prophet sometime between 740 and 687 BC; that chapters 40 to 60, so-called Second or Deutero-Isaiah were written about 537 BC; and that chapters 61 to 66 were written by Third or Trito-Isaiah. The first set of chapters, it's thought, were written in an era when the Assyrian Empire was on the rise and God's people felt menaced. The second set of chapters, some scholars believe, were written while anticipating the return of Judah's exiles from captivity in Babylon. The last group of chapters, these scholars believe, were written after the return from exile, when hope in and devotion to God were waning.

6. Chris Haslam's comments on this passage are helpful and to the point:

In 41:1, God speaks to Israelites scattered around the Mediterranean (“coastlands”, also in 42:4) in courtroom language, calling them together “for judgement”. God has “roused a victor from the east” (41:2, Cyrus) to serve him by conquering nations. God has acted in the past (“first”, 41:4) and will prophesy a coming revelation of himself (“last”). Other nations, and the gods they choose, are powerless, for they seek “courage” in what humans make (41:5-7). God demands: “set forth your case” (41:21): prove that you can foretell the future based on the past (“former things”, 41:22)! They cannot, but God can.

42:1-4 is one of four Servant Songs, poems about God’s special agent who will fulfill his purpose for the faithful community; though innocent, he will suffer for his people. People of other nations choose their gods, but God will select his “servant”, his “chosen”; he has anointed this person (or Israel) with his “spirit”. When the agent comes, he will be unobtrusive and quiet (42:2, unlike Cyrus), gentle, respectful of others, and patient (v. 3). He will “bring forth justice”, i.e. take legal decisions ratifying and executing God’s will. He will not fail (“faint”, 42:4) nor be discouraged (“crushed”) until he has achieved God’s purposes; he will win over people to God’s ways (“teaching”). He will continue to do what God did in the past (42:5): he, the creator, is the source of life for his people (as he was in Adam); he will give his “spirit” to those who follow him. God called Israel as his people, led and “kept” (42:6, Revised English Bible: “formed”, as he formed Adam) them, and swore a pact with them. They are to bring enlightenment to others (“a light to the nations”, 42:6), to set them free. 42:8-9 returns to the courtroom: God’s name is Yahweh (“the L ORD”); he alone is God. Having seen his integrity in his acts in the past, his people can be sure that the “new things” he announces will indeed happen. He will bring his integrity to all (42:1).

7. Psalm 29: I enjoy Sarah Hinlicky Wilson's comments on this psalm:

The voice of the Lord is heard seven times in Psalm 29: it is over d the waters, powerful and full of majesty; it breaks the cedars; flashes forth flames of fire; shakes the wilder-ness; makes the hinds to calve (or shakes the oaks – the Hebrew is ambiguous) and strips the forests bare. The glory of God thunders. The Lord makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion (Mt. Hermon) like a young wild ox, or, as the King James Version more charmingly puts it, "like a young unicorn." Is this really the God you want to encounter on the Appalachian Trail?

The cedars stand as warning enough on their own. The famous cedars of Lebanon were Solomon’s choice for building the first temple, and were selected specially by King Hiram of Tyre. They can grow over 100 feet tall, their circumference exceeding 50 feet, with wood that is perfumed, resinous evergreen and both rot- and knot-free. Such was their grip on the Israelite imagination that these trees are mentioned everywhere, from levitical codes of purification to prophetic analogies in Isaiah and Ezekiel. The latter compare the once-mighty, soon-to-fall Assyria with a cedar so splendid that "all the trees of Eden envied it."

But like sinful humans, these fabulous cedars are not permitted to remain in their pride. They are paired with lowly hyssop, a small and straggling foil to the cedars’ magnitude. In the Torah, cedar and hyssop work together to cleanse from leprosy. Solomon speaks of cedar and hyssop in one breath. Midrashic commentator Rabbi Isaac bar Tanlai chastises a former great: "You were proud like the cedar … but the Holy One humbled you like the hyssop that is crushed by everyone." In the end, it is hyssop that quenches the thirst of the dying Messiah. Lowliness serves the lowly, but when might matches might, the voice of the Lord triumphs, breaking the cedars.

And all this is to say nothing of the Lord over the waters. This God has proved himself before in the aqueous arena. There God’s Spirit was hovering and brooding, preparing to speak the first word that would bring something out of nothing. When that something turned to evil, and the one remaining righteous man built a little boat out of gopher wood, the waters came again to speak the Lord’s word of judgment against his people. Much later, the waters split in half to pave an escape route for enslaved Israelites, and folded shut to swallow up the pursuing Egyptians. And once a storm was conjured just to grip the attention of runaway Jonah out at sea, terrifying untold numbers of sailors in its wake.

The God who commands the waters commands everything else. So this psalm isn’t just an utterance of awe at the power wielded in and over nature. It’s also a polemic directed against confused pagans (and probably not a few confused Israelites) who mistakenly gave credit to idols. It’s no accident that Psalm 29 sounds so much like its Canaanite predecessors, observes scholar Peter C. Craigie. If anything, it’s deliberate, co-opting "the general storm image of battle . . . into a tauntlike psalm; the praise of the Lord, by virtue of being expressed in language and imagery associated with the Canaanite weather-god, Baal, taunts the weak deity of the defeated foes, namely the Canaanites." Anything the heathen thought belonged to Baal really belongs to the Lord, and there’s no better way to show it than by stealing the adjectives of one "god" and applying them to the other.

But still: even if this God is the creator and righteous judge, not the pseudo-divinity and pretender Baal, would you really want to meet him without a sturdy raincoat, a pair of galoshes and a friend with an SUV who could pick you up and bail you out? It is an act of extraordinary faith on the psalmist’s part to conclude with the encouraging words, "May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!" For whatever the voice of the Lord is saying under the circumstances detailed in the psalm, no one can hear it and live. If this is the voice that produced the succession of devastating hurricanes in the Gulf last fall, the only sensible solution is not to worship, but to evacuate. You can’t ride this storm. You must, as Luther said, "flee from God to God," from the God who drives you out to the same God who welcomes you home.

This God, who is over many waters and sits enthroned over the flood, has himself been swept overboard, immersed and engulfed in the river Jordan. Baptism with water is not enough, for God also flashes forth flames of fire: he baptizes with fire and the Holy Spirit. Water and fire on their own are words of God that are encoded and indecipherable. To worship God in unmediated nature is to risk ruination. But to drown in the waters of baptism in which the Lord himself was drowned, to receive the pentecostal fire of the Spirit which the Lord himself sent -- in this way we creatures of nature can worship our God in nature, and live.

[More tomorrow, I hope.]